In computer graphics it is often necessary to compute various types of transversal derivative fields along a curve on a specified surface in order to generate other curves and surfaces for use in computer modeling. A transversal derivative field refers to any tangential vector field along the curve that is not parallel to the tangent field of the curve at all of the points on the curve. Doing so is often difficult because of the complexities of the curves and the degrees of freedom involved in the computation.
According to some current methods, computation is point based, which involves estimation of the direction of the derivative field at certain points and then fitting an estimate of the derivative field to those points. A problem with this approach is that it does not generate an optimum solution and the resulting vector field may contain errors. This is due to the fact that this approach does not fully utilize the properties of the surface on which the curve lies.